South Korea's finance minister reiterates that the government is working on a supplementary budget bill to give the economy a much-needed shot in the arm.
Kim Hyesung reports.
The government is drawing up an extra budget bill.
Finance minister Hong Nam-ki says the bill will focus on three areas, tackling fine dust, boosting the economy and job creation.
It will review requests from government ministries and submit a budget bill to the National Assembly by late April.
He said the size of the budget has not been set, but it will likely be lower than the IMF's recommended figure of nearly eight billion U.S. dollars.
That's zero-point-five percent of South Korea's nominal GDP, which the IMF said would be needed to reach the Korean government's growth target of between 2-point-six to 2-point-seven percent for 2019.
Hong emphasized that boosting the economy is critical amid slowing global growth that's dragging down the country's exports.
At the meeting, he added the government will change the review process for a preliminary feasibility study of government infrastructure projects, such as road construction.
Changes include slashing the timeframe of the review process from an average of 19 months to 10 months, lowering economic feasibility and increasing balanced development as evaluation variables for non-capital regions to help enhance balanced regional development.
Since 1999, infrastructure projects requiring a budget of more than 44 million dollars, with over 26 million dollars coming from state coffers have to undergo preliminary feasibility studies to ensure they avoid wasting taxpayers' money.
Kim Hyesung, Arirang News.